Social Media’s Role in Corporate Reputation

As organizations scramble to keep up with emerging social platforms and trends, they are also looking for ways to confirm that their message and brand are consistent across these new channels. So how have companies like Panera Bread, Levi Strauss & Co., Domino’s Pizza and Starbucks leveraged social media to communicate their brand proposition and effectively manage their reputations? We answered that question in a recently published research brief and asked one of the analysts closer to the data to expand on the research below.

“With the shifting media landscape, companies must get creative to optimize their marketing efforts. In 2016, general public consumers were nearly twice as likely to recall a company’s social media campaign than they were to recall a print advertisement from that company. Moreover, social media is among the top three touch points by which millennials interact with companies that they are familiar with. If employed properly, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can serve as vehicles to communicate with consumers in a manner that is more direct and authentic than traditional forms of advertisement.”

~Zachey Kliger, Research Analyst, RI USA

Touch point recall

Check out the chart below (Figure 1 in the brief). You can see that the recall from social media channels is higher than traditional channels.

And with a higher recall comes an even greater opportunity to make an impact on high value stakeholders. So what can your organization do to make sure that your social channels are supporting your strategic communications goals?

How to tie social media to your reputation

Organizations that successfully communicate their brand value via their social platforms ask themselves the following questions:

Who internally is responsible for our social media strategy?

What are the goals of our social media strategy?

What is our approach to content?

Who are the priority stakeholders we want to target on social media?

Are we cross-linking our social media channels?

Are we maintaining organization and consistency when sharing content across various social channels?

Are we using social media in a way that supports the core business strategy?